Delays from Technical and Non-technical difficulties
I had meant to put up a number of podcasts of relaxation and self-healing techniques but was hit with some technical problems and then a cough. So this project got delayed.
These problems are getting taken care of and I hope to have a couple of posts up by tomorrow morning. Relaxation and dealing with upper respiratory infections will be the top priorities.
Thanks.
These problems are getting taken care of and I hope to have a couple of posts up by tomorrow morning. Relaxation and dealing with upper respiratory infections will be the top priorities.
Thanks.
Sorry to hear about your cough, Joe.
This comment is unsolicited advice, which is completely unnecessary, but since my Mom taught me this at the age of 4, here goes..
Gargle with warm salt solution, and if you're feeling frisky, do a warm saline sinus rinse also.
Very effective...
Hope you feel better soon.
I really appreciate everything you do for us, and I can't tell you how sustaining this is for me in my life right now.
Blessings and Love,
Sue
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im not sure how this works....i entered some info, then came to this "comments"....and saw the instruction "website".....what does that require?......but this is my first time here, so i guess ill learn how it all works.....i missed the last 3 classes because i was in chicago visiting my mother in law with my wife carol...hope to be there on tue, nov 10.....i, too, am concerned about your cough.....so much is being said these days about the flu, that it is almost too large to contemplate ......in the macro sense.....but in the micro, i see what i can do to improve my chances of survival.....meditation, of course, can keep my mind from doing the "naughty" things of dwelling on the possibilities of contact....but daily activities, like washing my hands, avoiding situations where it might be more "dangerous" like small, closed rooms with coughers and sneezers (but that isnt a big problem, but we did go to a movie the other night and it was relatively small and there were coughers and sneezers (mostly coughers) and i had nothing to do as a "defense" other than to do some short meditations, when i thought about it, to keep my mind clear, and trying to eat responsibly (avoid too much sweet-stuff), stick to the vegees and fruits as mainstays) take my meds(for the heart thing and the kidney stone thing) drink lots of fluids, mostly water...in general, to be aware and act accordingly without being obsessive!.....but, after all is said and done, i feel its a crap shoot....exposure, especially in the general population is not much controlable by me....now to my main comment: having been to your classes for a few years, i am pretty much aware of most of the things i have read, so far, on this page....i havent donemuch with the links...in my own journey, as spirit becomes more and more "defined" in my own perception, i am finding a kind of formalization of it, at least visually.....i dont believe spirit needs to have a body or other physical characteristics for me to acknowledge its existence, or in a more immediate sense, its form....we have talked about this in class at different times, and you seem to recognize the perceptions that others have with respect to this issue....i think i once said, a year or so ago, that spirits presence can be in the form of a dog (not a play on the god word, but a statement of existence that i could "see"....but not limited to that form....a sort of simplification to make the idea of form "real"....and you went along with it.....more and more, however, i do not require any form.....i "argue" with myself that my requirements for form are minimal, and in no way establish the existance of spirit and i leave it to a "feeling" i have....somewhere in the "me", a space, if you will, where i visualize spirit.....as an absence of form...this gives me the ability to recognize a much larger spirit than i would if it were something i could actually see....i also see that im running out of characters..and will end this with a word: peace
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About the exposure risk, yes it is a crap shoot. We can alter the odds in our favor, but its still random.
About Spirit having presence without form: That came up a lot last week and I'll be putting that post up either Sun or Mon AM.
Looking forward to seeing you Tues.
Peace.
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at the meeting last night i asked the question can "formlessness" appear to be "form"? i used as an example the mexican village scene which occurs when the first meditation of the evening is done. originally, it has no people, nothing is moving. the structures which form the village square are there but seem to be ill defined. in the center, where one would find a water fountain or something similar, is a large vertical structure, the top of which cannot be seen (at first it could be seen, but it developed in the more recent meditations to justgo up and up and that didnt bother me or cause me to investigate further. later, people would occur, scurrying about like the little characters in a lego vidio where a amusement park is created by the user and gradually these "people" occur...indescript for the most part...so my question centers on the first scene where there are no people, and hence the scene is without motion of any kind, can this, seemingly formed presentation be actually formless, since nothing is moving and nothing, for the most part requires an interpretation of some kind, ie, oh, "oh, i see a tavern", or "isnt that a bowl of some kind?".....and, because the centerpiece is for the most part infinite, spirit can exist without restriction. (i have trouble restricting spirit and am always looking for some vehicle to "hold" it! this brings up my question of last night, agreeing with the previous scenerio, can we then move to a differet kind of vehicle, that of the sound created when you strike the bowl! i see that sound to be infinite, since after it first occurs, it continues to diminish, getting smaller and smaller until i cannot hear it anymore, which doesnt say that it disappears, i just cant hear it....similar to the "structure" in the village. thus, i conclude that this is a fine vehicle for spirit since it is infinite and therefore not restrictive of spirits presence! this probvably sounds stupid, but i like spirit to have a lot of room so that it can fit!.....a perceptive issue with me, but nevertheless i dont have to confront the "problem" of having to confine spirit to something finite....like a body of some kind or a form i can recognize (i do allow that if i cannot recognize the form, then it appears to be to some extent infinite....like i imagine a dog looking at a tv, say, doesnt, in my mind, see a tv, rather something along with other somethings distinguishable from each other but not defined in the dogs mind!) as a mathematician, i am familiar with the concept of infinity as a something but not identifiable in our world. i can see nothing that is infinite. i imagine i can by pictureing the number line, but it all has to stop somewhere. since im running out of letters (3000, here i come) ill get right to it. is the sound emitted by the bowl being struck infinite and therefore formless?...you answered some of this in class, but i thought if i put it down like this you could address the specifics! finally: peace!
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Since you mention infinite I will work with that. Beginning mathematically:
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when we talked after class last tue (1st), i mentioned that i see a difference between "asking for the presence of spirit" and "recognizing the presence of spirit".....i feel spirit is always there, so i neednt call, i just have to acknowledge that spirit is there...maybe im "busy" and not making any conscious connectin to spirit, and then, a pause might occur, and i realize spirit is there, i just wasnt paying any attention to "it"....like now, i didnt "call" spirit to my consciousness as much as recognize it was there as i typed...thus came the comment i made earlier, i think spirit and self are intertwined....like fingers from each hand coming together and overlaping, sort of a holding of ones own hands.....thus if i were to "call" for spirit, i would be addressing the separateness of something which (to me) isnt separtate...in one of your prayers, "spirit prayer", the one which begins, "divine light (i say spirit) surrounds me, diving light sustains me...etc, you often end it with "i am one with diving light, divine light is one with me"....which to me indicates a non-separateness....coming then to the concept of "infinity", i think i refer to it more in the sense of unending in three dimensions....sort of like an ampty space ....of whatever size....i use the word infinity rather than empty because it gives me more insight into the vastness im trying to get to...so when i moved to another reference material by thinking of sound, i was trying to get to other manifestations of vastness or infinity from the standpont of the sound associated with the bowl, feeling that it is infinite becaue as the sound leaves my consciousness (i dont know whats going on beneath that but assume some kind of presence is there although i cant recognize it)and that doesnt end....sort of looking at the natural numbers on the number line with the number one, two being a bit smaller, 3 being smaller than two and so on with these numeerical images getting smaller and smaller as the sounds get fainter and fainter, but the recognition that they dont ever end, its just my abiltiy to "see" them that does!.....so if im allowed to use this vehicle to "set up" a residence of spirit then i have accomplished a form/formlessness in which spirit resides, and coupling that with my previous remarks, in which i reside....i discount my "experience" in these events, as you note ,as merely my own crude attempt to give
infinite form to something which i cannot directly perceive as infinite....i think its not so much that the sound "connects me with spirit" as the sound gives us a playground, since, as i indicated earlier, i feel spirit is always with me its my recognizing that and further, giving us someplace to 'play"....
thanks for your thoughtful responses
bob
oh, and your illustration of the "closed set", [0,1] is even more interesting if we make an open one! (o,1), that is not including the numbers o and 1 in it and thus letting us "guess" as to which number occurs after 0
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